Curses!

The self-declared culture warriors took a bit of a beating last week. It was just in time.

"Self-declared," by the way, because they aren't so much warriors as indignant blow-hards (some of whom have their own TV and radio shows) and because they wouldn't know culture if it reached up and slapped them on the ass.

Which, conveniently enough, brings me back to my point. The beating. Delivered, at least in part, by their commander-in-chief and his chief puppetmaster.

First, I'm afraid I'll have to bore you with some history. Sorry. On the up side, it's the history of naughty words on television, which should be at least a little interesting.

For decades, the Federal Communications Committee has charged itself with the weighty task of protecting our children from bad words on TV and the radio. The little brats are on their own everywhere else. It even came up with a definition of what qualifies as bad words. They are, in legal lingo, "indecent," a concept the FCC declared to be "intimately connected with the exposure of children to language that describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory activities and organs." All of which is a fancy way of saying "indecent" means words about pooping and screwing, without, you know, being indecent about it.

Ok, fine. This obsession with sex and defecation probably seems a bit silly and infantile to much of the world, but there probably isn't a burning need to graphically describe either of them during prime time. And the rules were applied carefully, so it took a pretty blatant violation to draw theFCC's attention. The classic case was the broadcast of George Carlin's seven dirty words during prime time. While punishing the broadcast of that particular bit is almost painful in its irony, even hardened America-hating liberals can probably grudgingly agree the broadcast wasn't a terribly good idea.

And then came Emperor Bush, and the social conservatives he had to please.

It all came to a head (so to speak) at the Golden Globes in 2002 or 2003. Bono got on stage and described some award as "really fucking brilliant." Inevitably, some ass whipped his indignity into a fine froth of righteousness and complained to the FCC. The FCC's enforcement bureau, being staffed by apparently reasonable human beings, dismissed the complaint. For nearly 30 years, the FCC policy had been that "fleeting expletives" are not indecent. This was clearly a fleeting expletive, so there was no basis for punishing the broadcast.

The righteous were having none of that. They owned the government now, so they -- not reasonable people -- would decide what was indecent. Which would be funny, if it didn't turn out to be true. In 2003, the FCC board (populated with several Bush appointees, selected, no doubt, to satisfy the same conservative busybodies who bitched about Bono's offhand remark in the first place) overturned the decision of the enforcement staff. And it wasn't fucking around. It didn't just overturn that isolated decision. It junked nearly 30 years of precedent and came up with brand new policy. Henceforth, it declared, any use of the words "fuck" or "shit" would be treated as indecent. And fined. Heavily.

To which, the United States Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit last week said -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- "WTF?"

Struggling to defend an indefensible shift in policy, the FCC made a series of arguments, all of which the Court declared -- paraphrasing again -- bullshit. I found the full discussion fascinating. Then again, I like to curl up with a good decision on the law of reinsurance, so maybe I'm not the best judge of what makes interesting reading. A portion of the opinion, though, must be universally accepted as truly fucking awesome.

The FCC insisted its new policy was absolutely necessary because it is "difficult (if not impossible) to distinguish whether a word is being used as an expletive or as a literal description of sexual or excretory functions." The Second Circuit called that a dumbass argument -- more or less -- explaining to the apparently very sheltered members of the FCC board that these words, "as the general public well knows, are often used in everyday conversation without any 'sexual or excretory' meaning." To prove its point -- and this is the awesome part -- the Court had to look no further than the occupants of the White House. As you may recall, in a telling example of his grasp of the intricacies of foreign policy, Bush was caught on tape explaining to Tony Blair that the solution to the problem in Lebanon was to “get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit.” Even more famously, Vice President Dick (how's that for indecency?) Cheney adroitly and persuasively responded to an argument by telling a United States Senator to "go fuck yourself."

I think the Second Circuit's reasoning went something like this: If a barely functional idiot and a soulless android can tell the difference between a fleeting expletive used for emphasis and a graphic depiction of fornication or defecation, then so can the rest of the country.

Again with the paraphrasing.

Whatever the Court's precise reasoning, it's timing couldn't have been better. The decision was issued early in the week. So on Thursday, if the universe were just, we could well have heard this on a 24-hour news station:

"Welcome back to CNNBC Fair and Balanced News. As we were reporting before the break, recent developments in Iraq .... Wait, interrupting here for Breaking News. We are being told that hotel heiress Paris -- Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me! This shit isn't news!"